2025 in Review

January

Fun

• 🎳 Ralph’s bowling birthday
• 🀄️ Learning Mahjong at Sik Fan

Art

• Breaking Lines at the Estorick Collection

Books

• The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
• The Art of the Straight Line by Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson

February

Fun

• Celebrating my birthday with good friends 🎉

Books

• Design as Art by Bruno Munari
• Things: a story of the 60s by Georges Perec

Work

• Visiting Barrow-in-Furness to deliver a one day workshop on OKRs for Ørsted Wind Energy
• Speaking to ~50 digital transformation folks at the British Film Institute on OKRs

Gigs

• Maribou State at Ally Pally
• TDC Tunes: Electronic in the Tower

March

Travel

• Visiting Amsterdam!

Gigs

• Sub Focus at Ally Pally
• Tucan Band at Ninety One Living Room
• Experimental ambient shows at The Old Church in Stoke Newington

Art

• Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern

Blog

• Visual Control
• Decomposition

April

Blog

• Building an OKR Community

Books

• Species of Spaces and other Pieces by Georges Perec

Travel

• Norfolk where we joined the RSPB, and I visited Norwich Cathedral for the first time in 30 years

Gigs

• Hania Rani at ICA
• Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein and Oh to Believe in Another World by William Kentridge at South Bank centre accompanied by a live performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 10

Days out

• The Warner Bros. Studio Tour – The Making of Harry Potter and enjoying it far more than I imagined.

May

Celebrating my son’s 13th birthday with visits to:

• Horizon 22. Great views over London, terrific ice-cream, and FREE admission! Great alternative to the Shard.
• Hastings again — it’s becoming a tradition!

Travel

• Attending the excellent GDS Strategy & Assurance away day in Bristol
• 🎉 Michigan to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday!

Gigs

• Haribo Kimchi at Southbank Centre
• Dominique Dumont and World Brain at the ICA

June

Work

• Getting more buy-in from senior government folk to use our live delivery dashboard

Fun

• A visit from our Canadian friends!
• Visits to the Parliament Hill Fields Lido in Hampstead Heath

Inspiration

• Latest Serpentine Pavilion designed by Marina Tabassum.
• No Kings Day
• Iron and the soul by Henry Rollins
• AI 2027

Blog

• Revisited On diversity & pride

July

Work

• Wrapped up my lean portfolio role with the UK’s Government Digital Service
• Held a fun half-day workshop with digital teams at BFI

Travel

• Visiting my sister, brother-in-law, and parents in California
• Running with the Healdsburg Running Company crew at Lake Sonoma
• Seeing giant redwood trees at Armstrong Woods
• Beach camping with longtime friends on the Olympic Peninsula

August

Work

• A fun half day on-site workshop with B-Lab UK

Art

• Yoshitomo Nara @ the Hayward Gallery
• Do Hoh Suh @ Tate Modern
• Feel the Sound @ The Barbican

Fun

• Doing a London Mystery Guide walk with my son
• Visiting Bletchley Park with my son
• Camping & hiking with my son in the New Forest (so many ponies!)
• Discovering Strudel and attending a couple of super-fun live-coding events

September

Work

• Running a second full-day workshop with B Lab UK around OKRs and business planning. Best part: Luna the dog!
• Onboarding for a new longer term role with a new government client including getting security clearance
• Ran a super fun full-day workshop with a casual games client in Berlin.

Travel

• Weekend in Berlin ahead of a client workshop

Books

• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Finished
• The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild - Started

Blog

• Revisited How to write OKRs
• Aligning OKRs

Discoveries

Note to self: Revisit these when you have time

• Tristram “Tris” Oaten, especially “How to Sound Great” via Lisa Reimers
• This awesome geological map via Mark Ehrhardt
• The pleasures of live coding and performing for the first time at an Algorave
• Nudel.cc - an addictively fun live-coding jam space
• Pasta Gang - a wonderful live coding community
• The weird & wonderful Pink Trombone vocal synthesiser
• Stand Out Socks I like these and these and these and…
• Hexler - Nice products for creative coding
• Alpaca 2025 talks from Saturday the 20th

October

Work

• Finally started a new delivery gig with the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)

Art

• Lee Miller at Tate Britain
• National Gallery where the re-hung Bacchus and Ariadne looks terrific
• Seeing the premiere of Hamnet at the London Film Festival
• Visiting my parents in Michigan for my mom’s 80th birthday! ❤️

November

Work

• Facilitating an OKR workshop with MBA students at ESCP

Fun

• A lovely 12 mile walk with friends in Windsor Great Park
• Celebrating a friend’s 50th birthday by jamming in a recoding studio and going clubbing (until 10pm)
• Attending my first Arsenal match with a friend

Art & design

• Discovering Tom Bird’s lovely work via Vitsoe
• Remembering the beauty of Cargo sites
• I bought this great scarf designed by a person with epilepsy
• Visiting the Museum of the Home
• Visiting the Future of Food exhibit at the Science Museum

Gigs

• Seeing David Kwong’s great show The Enigmatist at Wilton’s Music Hall

Blog

• How I winter
• Delivery Management
• Routines
• Habits
• Visualise, standardise, optimise
• The GROW model

December

Work

• Visiting Bari and teaching a full-day OKR workshop to 25 brilliant product folks
• Conducting another all day OKR workshop in London with 35+ amazing management consultants
• Getting better at Playwright
• Learning and using the GOV.UK Prototype Kit
• Watching my team at FCDO improve every day. We’ve got one-click pull-request-driven production deployments, now!
• Helping GDS to publish updates to the AI Knowledge Hub
• Ongoing hourly consulting for B-Lab UK

Art

• The Art of Teeth exhibition at Bart’s Pathology museum
• A trip to the Wallace Collection and seeing Caravaggios Cupid

Books

FLESH by David Szalay - Spare and deeply moving, like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver writing about modern London.

Fun

• Having lunch at Von Crumb in Belsize Park
• Being invited to a client’s Christmas dinner at the Bull & Last - YUM! 😋
• Having dinner with the WB-40 crew in London
• Adding scrolling logos & “candy cane” horizontal rules to this very website
• Taking my son to “wifi wars” at the Royal Institution
• Christmas in London! ⭐
• Having a great visit from my sister-in-law and her son from the US which included:
  • Seeing Cinderella at the Hackney Empire
  • Seeing The Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at the Young Vic. Fantastic performances all around and very moving. An excellent reminder of the aftermath that often happens when governments decide to ’liberate’ people.
  • Visiting Horizon 22 to take in a great view (for free)
  • Braving the sales at Selfridge’s
  • Doing a “Hidden London” tour inside Baker Street station (I’m still coughing from the dust)

That’s a wrap. I’m going to climb the hill behind my house and watch the fireworks going off around the city while thinking of the true meaning of Yule.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful 2026 full of peace, contentment, and progress!

2025 Photo gallery